April 27, 2004
Run For Your Wife!
Theatre Report
We were invited to the theatre the other day. Four of us were to meet at Val's house in Barnet and walk from there. Walk? She lives nowhere near a theatre we thought. However it was an AmDram (Amateur Dramatic) production in a local theatre so maybe walking was indeed possible. Check out that groovy website!
We arrived and had a pre-match drink and then set off on a 3 minute walk with about 10 minutes to go. We crossed the road and then Val declared she was unsure of the way. So we got into our cars and followed Val. She drove 50 yards from her home and thenstopped and asked for directions. Surely a new world record?
We drove on, took the first right and parked. We got oput of the cars, took the next right and walked a couple of hundred yards. We were now, we reckoned, nearer to the house than the cars.
We enetered the little 60 seater hall, bought a program and settled down. There were red hot bar heaters all around the walls making it very stifling. The wrinklies in front of us put their tired legs up on the low stage and we placed an order for the break - tea or coffee. We read the well produced but slim program, the highlight of which was the thanks given to the people who had leant the 3 piece suite for the stage. It was awful. I would prefer to remain anonymous I think.
The play was excellent and I thought the actors could have been professionals. It's an old Ray Cooney farce and it was very funny. As usual, they had tried to modernise it by introducing mobile phones etc. but the stereotyping of the police was right out of the sixties or earlier.
Towards the end of the play one of the lead characters appears wearing only her underwear. Her knickers could only be described as "slightly flappy" as there was good bush of dark hair on show. This, of course, quickly became the talking point after the show, possibly when one of us felt brave enough to introduce to polite company. "Did you see that bush?" I think was the opening gambit. Which quickly spread on to how the play should have been performed in Bushey and by Mary Hinge.
The post match beers were good and we went home. We told our babysitter where we had been and she asked what we thought of the play and we said we loved it. My favourite character had this wonderfully rubbery expressive face - which was lucky as it goes. It was our babysitter's husband...
April 24, 2004
More Undertaking 2
You might recall that someone thought I was the undertaker. My latest reply was:
Nothing's up Joy. Quit with the silly questions!!
And she sent me an aol e-card
April 19, 2004
More Big News
Following on the series, here is some more big news from Cornwall. A coffee shop has re-opened. I should stress that these articles are from the West Briton which cover Cornwall and Devon I think. So it's not like it is the local rag covering a few thousand people. Have they nothing better to do? I guess the same could be said about me. Or you.
Crazy Golf
I know Crazy Golf is meant to be a little bit crayzee but the spelling on the natty little signs was just a little out of bounds...
Spelling of [the] century
and there were plenty more...
Missing plural
Missing apostrophe
Missing apostrophe and the sentence is broken
Construction error
King who? Let's not go to Camelot, it is a very silly place (Monty Python)
Grammar/spelling
So that's 7 holes out of 18. Just a few over par.
April 15, 2004
More Undertaking
I mentioned that I had received an email asking if I was The Undertaker. The response was to say "yes". The reply has come
HI UNDERTAKER
SO WHAT'S UP WITH THE OTHER ADDRESS WHY YOU JUST COULDN'T GIVE ME THIS ONE . I MISS YOU AND I MISS OUR FRIENDSHIP. I'M GLAD THAT WE CAN STILL COMMUNICATE UNTIL THEY MAKE UP THEIR MIND WHAT TO DO ABOUT YOU.
NOW JUST TO MAKE SURE YOU'RE NOT PULLING MY LEG. IF YOU ARE REALLY THE UNDERTAKER WHAT COLOR IS YOUR HAIR AND WHERE DO WE WORK.
JOY
My response this time needs to be more cunning...
April 13, 2004
Solitude
Mudflats are amazing places but I don't recommend exploring them unless you liked getting sucked down in the goo. You might notice a little blob in the centre and if you click on the photo you will see it's a man. He seemed to be unsuccessfully pulling on a big rope. I have no idea what may have been attached to it and can only assume he made it back before the tide came in. One things for sure, he wasn't going to be bothered by passer-bys.
The Undertaker
I received an email overnight, the contents of which are:
HI
I'M LOOKING FOR A FRIEND
ARE YOU THE UNDERTAKER
IT MAY SOUNDLIKE A CRAZY QUESTION BUT IF YOU ARE IT'S NOT
Added information: I don't know who the sender is and I am not the undertaker. Of course I am going to reply for the hell of it, however I am undecide as to precisely word it - any ideas?
April 12, 2004
National Trust
Do we have any National trust any more? Probably not but did we ever? Anyway, I'm not going to launch into politics but The National Trust do some good work to preserve our, errr, English Heritage. Except that's a different organisation altogether. They have wonderful gardens, coastlines and gardens. And they preserve them using tweedy old wrinklies in green wellies - I'll be one of these one day.
They also preserve them by being particular about modes of transport allowed.
Places to Ass
You can never find a place to ass around when you need one. Fortunately, in Devoran, they help you out:
and, sure enough, we found a suitable place
Skip Woman
If you're a bloke in a red estate car, you can dump as much stuff as you like. But if you are a double-underlined woman then don't. Seconds later a red Volvo estate registration P342WGL passed us - if that is you - BEWARE.
April 10, 2004
Selling Lines
Drugs are a problem round most parts of the world but I thought this was pretty blatant advertising all the same. Maybe the police turn a blind eye. Although if any given eye is blind it doesn't matter where you turn it does it? I recall the Two Ronnies announcing that a lorry load of monocles had been stolen and police were looking for a criminal with one eye. If they don't find him after a week they are going to open the other eye.
April 09, 2004
If I Had a Hammer
At Trelissick Gardens there is a gallery of fine paintings and crafts. You have to take care especially if you have small children, buggies, long scarves, parkinson's etc. as it is easy to knock things over.
I think it's a bit much when they give you a hammer to have a go with though.
Mackerel
We've been mackerel fishing before including the gutting and this time we went with the people staying with us in Cornwall. Their girls had not been before but they seem to enjoy it as long as they didn't have to actually touch the fishh.
It is a strange "sport" in some respects, dangling your rod over the side of the boat and lifting it up and down, but the fish tasted wonderful!
Grains of Wisdoms
It was a very windy day and squally rain and so on and we found ourselves on the beach. The kids, in the background, were chasing waves. Durvin, in the foreground, decided to build a small dam against the incoming tide with his bare hands. His hands turned blue.
I used to build dams on the beach at Swanage when I was a kid. There would be 10 to 20 kids all trying to stop the incessant flow of sewage coming out of a big pipe in the sea wall. Pointless but fun if you are a kid. And possibly health endangering. But that is no excuse for Durvin.
April 07, 2004
Nice Names
London has some nice street names like Ropemaker Street and, ohhh I don't know you, and you can probably think of lots of better ones. In fact Dave already has and you can find out some history behind these. However it doesn't have the monopoly on these types of names. Here is one from St Ives in Cornwall. Nice huh?
Toilet Terror
Continuing with local news, this was on the front page. It's amazing the excrement we can get ourselves into. In this case the situation is:
* Builders want to build some houses
* Locals want to stop them. They attempt to designate part of the building plot as a village green
* Builders say that, in which case, they can't use the sceptic tanks that are there. Therefore no flushing of loos etc.
They also helpfully add that they can't use them whilst the dispute is being settled. Talk about being in between a rock and a, errm, soft warm brown sticky messy place.
April 06, 2004
He Made Me Take it
Kids. They shouldn't be encouraged with their juvenile toilet humour should they.
Kids Take Photos
And you get some good results. Note that I haven't cropped this picture - it's an original!
April 04, 2004
Local News
Cointinuing the new Newspapers category and following on from my earlier posting I bring you the following from the Falmouth Packet:
Now I wouldn't want you to think that not much happens down here - in fact the front page story was about the rescue of a drifting yacht - but you do tend to get these non-news stories as well. I wonder what a high pressure hose attachment looks like. Is it anything to do with reinforced incontinence tights? Probably not.
April 03, 2004
A Trip to the Doctor
I went to the Doctor the other day. If you want to know why click here. The NHS wait doesn't always apply to my GP. Last time I went I was seen within a few minutes but as I go less than once a year maybe that is not representative. After 50 minutes I was asked to go and see Dr Beatus.
Dr Beatus is a slightly blubbery Israeli with a Welsh accent, a skull cap and dodgy skin. He's a nice bloke and whilst diagnosing my interesting ailment he decided he would try and show me a diagram of it. So he called up Internet Explorer and went to Google Images.
Now, in my day job, I have had customers complain of the sort images you can get on Google even when you type in something innocuous such as "hamster". So when he was looking up my part of the body I watched with some interest. The pictures were ok but he was incapable of wading through the pop-up advertisements and gave up.
Whilst taking my blood pressure he asked me what sort of business I was in. I confessed - Internet access. First off he was embarrassed but he soon got over that and enquired about contention ratios and should he move up to a 2Mb connection etc.
Anyway, the NHS is free so some info from me seems like a fair swap.
April 01, 2004
Golf Sale
I appreciated this sign.
Some time ago there was some poor soul hanging on to a Golf Sale sign (maybe you don't get these down your way) and it was raining. He had a nice big umbrella. I offered him £10 for it which considering a) it was used b) there was a sale on apparently and c) I didn't have one, I thought very reasonable.
From Today's Newspapers
I don't buy newspapers much or read them online. National and International events seem to reach me via TV/Radio etc. so it doesn't worry me much. However, I bought myself a paper today - The Telegraph. You see I will go to any lengths to kill of the readership of this blog (4999 visitors last month. It just couldn't quite get to 5000. Of course I know that 4998 are bots).
I'm off to Cornwall again at the weekend so I thought I'd bring some local news to you as well when I'm there. It's bound to be exciting like the article I read that said that when the grass is wet, the children at school traipse mud into the classrooms. Great stuff.
Today I bring you "Young men are brainwashed, says Muslim leader". No, really? And I thought they just sat alone in a room, considered life the universe and everything very rationally, tied 200lb of semtex to their belts and got on a crowded bus.
There's a superb quote from the Uncle of one of the 8 suspected terrorists that were arrested: "They are just regular guys. They are as British as they come. They don't even have beards.". He should be, ooooh I don't know, a Detective Inspector at least with that line of thinking.
Reminds me of the Billy Connolly joke about Cubans getting free beer, cigars, women etc. because they say they are one of Castro's men. A Scotsman sees this happening and tries it on at the off-licence and the shopkeeper says "You don't look like one of Castros men to me. They have saggy faces, beards and a big cigar sticking out of their mouths". So the Scotsman lifts up his kilt and says "Secret Service". Sorry.